Needle, Meet Haystack

Failure and hapless mendicants still reign supreme!  On the rise: gestures of greeting and travel show personalities.

By the way,  I’ve been nominated for Brazen Careerist’s Best Blog Post of 2009!   [EDIT: Voting has ended.]

Sometimes, even the all-powerful job seeking tool of networking can lead to dead ends.

While I was still in my Senior year of college, I had attended a number of networking events for advertising professionals, and made numerous connections in different cities.  When I moved to one of those cities, I called up to one of the connections who I had stayed in contact with, asking for her help in securing an interview with her company.  ”Good luck,” she said.  And then she hung up.

I was confused – why would someone who was representing their company at a networking event, who was there for the very purpose of finding people to work for them, not want to help me get an interview?  We had kept in contact and been friendly with each other, so it wasn’t a case of personal dislike.  So why would someone not want to help?

One of the things that we fail to take into account when asking someone to help us get a job at their company is the feelings that they may have regarding the consequences of this action.  Although they may want to help you, it might seem that the opportunity cost of doing so does not outweigh the threat to their own job.  After all, there are two possible outcomes for the recommendation:

1. You don’t get the job
2. You get the job

In the case of #1, there is a fear that your not getting the job can reflect badly on the person who recommended you.  Their employer might question their judgment and the people they associate with.  The last thing you would want to hear from your boss is, “Why did you waste my time with that person?”

But if you get the job (#2), it could be much worse.  Besides the fear that your success could overshadow your contact’s, there is also the danger of your performance reflecting back on them at any time.  If you turn out to be a poor worker, are caught stealing from the company, become lax in fulfilling your corporate obligations or provide any cause to be fired, the blame could always shift to them, since they referred you to the company in the first place, and how dare they not inform the company that you would turn out like this!

Altruism and support for others can waver, especially when one is questioning their own job security.

However, this fear is often unjustified; if anything, companies reward their employees for helping them to find good candidates quickly, saving both time and the cost of posting an open position on many websites, sorting through applications and so on.  If such a situation arises where a connection is unable to follow through on helping you get a job at their company, ask if it’s all right if you name-drop them during a communication to the organization, which mitigates their involvement but still give you a leg up over the competition.

When it comes to networking, your contacts might not always deliver.  But don’t look at it as a reflection on you – there’s always a way to work around it.

A while back, I was reading an article about the Radical Honesty movement, something that has a lot of potential to be a constructive development in the workplace.  Unfortunately, its potential is equally destructive.

Radical Honesty, as the article puts it, is the complete abdication of lying and secrets:

Everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough — a world without fibs — but…we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it.

The nice thing about Radical Honesty is that it would make work more efficient and effective.  People would speak plainly and directly, getting what they need quicker.  The dance of office politics would be mitigated by open communication, which could lead to more merit-based advancement within organizations.

The downside, of course, is that everyone would be a jerk.

If the filter between the brain and mouth is lifted, politeness goes out the window.  This would lead to greater conflicts (though admittedly, the possibility of conflict resolution in a timely manner is significantly higher) and more interpersonal problems between workers, as the thin veneer of civility is ripped away.  Conversations might go like this:

Boss: Frank, where’s the report you were supposed to have on my desk two hours ago?

Frank: Well, boss, I blew it off because I don’t like being given busy work so instead I played Farmville on Facebook and chatted with my friends on Gmail.

Boss: I don’t like you.

If all of this seems a bit familiar, it might be because the concept was explored pretty well in the first third of the recent movie, The Invention of Lying.  But might a bit of Radical Honesty be a good thing?

The problem with verbal communication is that the words spoken to others mean very little.  We rely on tone and body language far more than what is actually spoken to decode what others really mean.  But if language is delivered plainly and directly, with no hidden meaning, the other signals become complimentary and inconsequential.  This means that any method we use to communicate with others, be it in person, over the phone or in text, is just as valid as the others and eliminates some of the weaknesses in non-physical communications.

Even though Radical Honesty would create a culture of jackassery, using some if its principles to create more clear and concise communications with others can help you to become more efficient and effective in the workplace.

My favorite question to ask people who I have just met, or haven’t known for long, and one that really helps in understanding a person’s motivations and personality, is one of the simplest.

What was the first thing you wanted to be when you grew up?

If you’re asking a woman, make sure to toss in the corollary, “And don’t say ‘princess.’  Everyone says ‘princess.’”  I’m not trying to be sexist here, but after having asked this question for years on end, I have noticed that most women will say ‘princess’ at the first pass.

When you ask someone this question, you find out a lot about where they started.  A police officer or firefighter was concerned about public safety.  A doctor or nurse wanted to help individuals and families.  A construction worker wanted to create and help build something with others.  An astronaut wants to explore and find new things to share with others.  Whatever it is, the position has something to do with their earliest impulses towards others and some core concepts about society and others.

A good follow-up to the question is, “What do you do now?”

Besides the implied disconnect between original intentions and current execution (in a statistic I just made up, around 3% of people get the job they first wanted), you can track the progression and development of your conversation partner’s career path.  Although few people end up with the job that they first wanted, many of them still have a tangential relationship between the two.  The core values or underlining reason behind the first job that they ever wanted can still be found in their current vocation.

It’s also a good question to ask yourself.  Why did you want that first job?  What led you to your current field?  Why do you have (or are you searching for) that career?  Have you moved away from your original plans, and if so, why?  What changed?

Answering these questions can help you to determine your real motivations for your present employment situation, and might give you some insight on where you want your career to go next.

And if you’re wondering, I wanted to be a T-Rex when I grew up.

Oh my gosh, you guys.  I love Batman.  I mean, he’s the Dark Knight Detective, with all those wonderful toys and that gravely, makes-the-devil-poop-himself voice.  Plus, he’s the ultimate expert on everything.  And when he doesn’t feel like being Batman, he can be a multi-billionaire (at least) and travel around the world, doing multi-billionaire activities.  So I think it’s safe to say that Batman is pretty rad.

Of course, he had to watch his parents get murdered in front of him in an alley (called “Crime Alley,” which was a pretty big tip-off if you ask me) before he devoted himself to a lifelong pursuit of justice against evildoers, so that’s a top contender on anyone’s “Reasons To Not Be Batman” list.  Another item that would be on that list is the investment that Bruce Wayne made to become the Caped Crusader.

According to a study that I can’t believe people actually paid money for, it would take someone 20 years in the real world to become Batman.  In addition to a more diverse and difficult training regime than that of a decathlete and a Michael Phelps-ian diet, there’s the need for consistent education and the mastery of (or at least high competency at) scores of different skills.  So there’s a high opportunity cost to becoming Batman.

When you analyze his motivations, Batman was originally created by Bruce Wayne with the specific purpose of avenging the deaths of his parents.  So his goal was essentially to extract revenge upon the mugger who killed them – Joe Chill in the comics, Jack Napier in the Tim Burton movies.  In both cases, Batman did avenge his parents by disposing of (but not killing) their murderer.  So, for all intents and purposes, Bruce Wayne could give up being Batman now that he had accomplished his original goal.  Instead, he escalated it.

His new mission became something along the lines of, “Protect the citizens of Gotham City and fight crime,” which, while admittedly generic, allows him to continue being Batman.  And why shouldn’t he?  While it might shorten his lifespan, he has judged that this is an acceptable sacrifice, predicated on the 20 (estimated) years of preparation.  The opportunity cost of the training is still higher than the cost of continuing to be Batman (see The Dark Knight for a better explanation).

Batman’s goal-setting is indicative of a pattern that you can apply to your own life.  Many people spend months, if not years, training themselves to be proficient at a specific professional competency through college, trade school, certification classes, seminars, apprenticeships and so on.  And yet, many of these abilities are not fully cultivated; people move on to another field, quit their position altogether, or only obtain the skills to accomplish one thing, then promptly forget them.

Batman punches people who do that in the face.

Instead, take the skills and education that you’ve been developing and apply them to your new career path.  Customer service can be applied to dealing with co-worker conflicts.  Database management can be used to create a more efficient task management system.  Plumbing can be used to fix the leaky faucet in the break room.  And so on.

Additionally, Batman teaches us that once we accomplish a long-term goal, we should not rest on our laurels and become inefficient.  One should create a new goal that builds off of the last one to stay motivated and keep working effectively.  Although it doesn’t have to be as lofty and almost impossible as a war on crime itself, building new goals on top of each other is a good way to continue to develop personally and professionally.

So the next time you find yourself asking what to do now that you’ve completed another long-term goal, just ask this question: What Would Batman Do?

I don’t know about you, but I hate those people who say stuff like, “Oh, I don’t own a TV.  It’s a waste of time.”  Or, “I don’t see any reason to have a cell phone.”  Or, most damning of all, “I don’t really need a computer.” It’s okay to use them less – we’ve discussed that.  And I’m not saying this because I might be biased.  But to discount an entire form of widely used technology will only doom you to failure and obsolescence.

With shared cultural experiences going on the decline, it becomes harder and harder to relate to others, much less communicate with them.  By keeping yourself voluntarily blind from books, newspapers, radio, TV and other forms of media, you’re removing yourself from the world.  And you also lose proficiency.

The more time you spend with something, the more adept you become, and the more receptive you are to new advancements and trends.  The seemingly wider gap between recent generations can be attributed to the development and prevalence of technology among young people, many of whom first learned to use a computer in elementary school (whereas previous generations were not familiar with the skill set involved, save for maybe typing).  This technological symbiosis between computers and Generations X and Y has led to a communications barrier with many of their older co-workers, save for those who took it upon themselves to keep up.

If you ignore the TV, you miss out on water cooler chats with co-workers that can strengthen your professional reputation and relationships.  If you skip out on the movies, you lose common reference points with clients.  If you abhor a cell phone, people might stop trying to contact you.  And if you keep away from the Internet, you’ll lose the race before it has even started. So go out into the world, experience everything through a variety of media, and don’t count out any of it.  You’ll only be shooting yourself in the foot.

The late Sir James Goldsmith, billionaire financier, once said*, “When you marry your mistress, you create a job vacancy.”  And this holds a lot of truth to many situations in life, amorous or not.

Something that I have discussed with great frequency is turning an aspirational position or a hobby into a career.  And although the focus has been primarily on the realities of each job’s duties, one thing that I haven’t mentioned much is the potential void that it can create.

Hobbies are a form of escapism over anything else.  You dive into a subject or a skill and hone that ability out of pleasure and enjoyment over financial gain.  While you could professionally pursue your hobby, you choose not to, perhaps for fear of adulterating the experience or adding on stress.  Or maybe you leave it as a hobby because you want it to still be fun.

The problem with this is that over time, people can get very good at their hobbies, and see that monetizing their skill is the next logical step.  This then creates the vacancy mentioned in the quite above – so how does one turn a hobby into a career without making that sacrifice?

The easiest way to do it is twofold: change how you think about the hobby-turned-career, and get a new hobby.

If you keep thinking of how fun something used to be, chances are that you won’t enjoy it as much.  So if you’re willing to sacrifice your hobby to make a few bucks, you’ll also have to sacrifice thinking of it as a hobby.  Unfortunately, you will have to think of it as work.  This is why professional athletes don’t play their sport recreationally.

You’ll also need to fill that vacancy in your schedule.  You should be starting a new hobby as soon as you’ve decided to turn your old one into a career.  In this way, you have time to get acquainted with your new pastime and let it fill in the hole in your schedule that the old one has created.

When you feel stifled by your career, remember that you can always look to your hobby for a relaxing escape.  But when you want to turn your hobby into work, keep in mind that you’ll need to start escaping to somewhere else.

*It’s possible this was actually said by playwright Sacha Guitry, according to Wikipedia.

Yes, I’m fully aware of the reference that you might make from the title.

But when all is said and done, a pen really is one of the most useful tools that you can have in your arsenal.  As geeky as it might seem, it pays to always carry one around with you (though not necessarily in your shirt pocket).  When it comes to business, networking, job searching or just day-to-day life, anything from a 7 cent Bic to a La Modernista Diamonds (look it up) is crucial to success:

• Ever get a pen at the bank, a restaurant, grocery store or other location where you have to sign something, but it’s out of ink?  No worries if you’re carrying your own!
• Out of business cards?  Write your info on the back of someone else’s, on a scrap of paper, or any small item that the other person can hold on to.  You’ll look more prepared than you did just a minute ago when you realized that you were out of business cards.
• Have a great idea for a blog post, something to bring up at work, a change you should make to your resume, or something you need to pick up from the store?  If you’ve got a pen and a piece of paper handy, you can record and remember it easily.
• I went to a job interview once where the interviewer forgot her pen.  I gave her mine.  I got a job offer.  I’m not saying that these events are directly related, but it probably helped.

It’s entirely possible that you could manage to cover each of those items on the list with another item, like a cell phone.  But making yourself overly dependent on technology is never a good thing (as touched on here, here and here).  A low-tech solution is always a fine alternative, especially when it can cost only a few cents to take care of.  Carrying around a pen might seem like something obvious, but do you actually do it?

There’s a tendency to rely on multitasking gadgets more than simpler unitaskers, which can lead to some unfortunate results.  It might be faster to type something into a note program on an iPhone, but will you remember it’s there?  And how many note apps do you have – will you remember where you put it?

A pen is literally a seven cent solution.  And you don’t really want to put the lessons of English classes from elementary school to high school to waste, do you?  So the next time you find yourself in a situation where you need to write something down, just grab the pen you brought with you.  It’s really that simple.

A while back, I was watching Real Chance of Love 2: Back in the Saddle on VH1, which shouldn’t surprise you if you’ve read this post, and a contestant offered a surprising amount of insight with this line:

Is you a pipe or a diamond?…A pipe bursts under pressure, but diamonds is made. [sic]

Mauling of the English language aside, she makes a good point.  Pressure and stress cause one of two reactions in people: crumbling under the strain or rising to the occasion.  No one is immune to their effects; stress in and of itself cannot lead to indifference about said stressful situation.

The personal (and in some cases, corporate) responses that you will encounter when it comes to hard times, difficult decision-making, fixing problems and so on will lead to how your relationships are truly defined.  And although you should all be diamonds because you read about stress management last week, that doesn’t mean that everyone else you meet will follow suit.

Since people respond to stress differently, they also respond to how others respond to stress differently.  If you respond more positively, you might look down on or try to over-nurture those on a negative bent.  And if you respond negatively, you defer your responsibilities all to positive responders which can lead to resentment from them, or hold resentment towards them yourself.  So how do you all get on the same page to lead to harmony?

The easiest (and in some cases, “easy” may be inferred to be a term used loosely) way to achieve a more productive environment in the face of stress is to convert everyone to the same mindset when it comes up.  Rather than having a bunch of people running around bemoaning the stressful situation, or having conflict among those who respond to stress differently, the team should work together to overcome the source of the stress.  Even if it’s not a total change, getting some people to focus or just relax can lead to greater dividends than progressing forward with conflicts intact.

So the next time you’re faced with a daunting task with a new group (or even just yourself on a solo expedition), there’s one question that you should always ask:

Is you a pipe or a diamond?

This past weekend, I had a chance to sit down with some friends, the biggest bowl of popcorn commercially available, and a pretty terrific movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales.  If you haven’t seen it, the basic gist of it is that it’s a Clint Eastwood western from back in the day before he was directing.  As we watched Clint kick all sorts of butt in the Old West, we all found ourselves letting out one definitive statement during various parts of the movie: “What a badass.”

After the movie ended and we all reflected on our shared viewing experience (before getting snack refills and popping in Rio Bravo), I realized something: Clint’s badassery wasn’t just a role, nor was it just his attitude.

It was his brand.

Although many people consider the term “personal branding” to refer to establishing one’s own online reputation through a website, blog, social networks and so on, it refers to a grand tradition centuries older than the Internet.

It’s likely that the concept of the personal brand came about when Og the caveman was able to convince Ug, Thak and all of the other Cro-Magnons that he should become leader of their tribe (which had never before had a leader), and was given the position.  He had found a way to establish himself as a leader, and kept that position and brand until he was trampled by a wooly mammoth.

Personal branding has gone beyond leadership and government to include writers, artists, military personnel, and almost any famous person in all of history.  In fact, one of the best examples of personal branding at its best and worst is the celebrity.

Going back to Clint Eastwood for a minute, one can find a clear delineation between the roles he chose and the image (and subsequent success) that he cultivated from them.  Eastwood, like Western peers John Wayne and Lee Van Cleef, chose roles as a stoic hero (or anti-hero) for almost all of his films.  Even in some of his less genre-specific movies (i.e.: Every Which Way But Loose), he kept a consistent stable of attitudes, mannerisms, actions and reactions that branded the characters as his.  Clint Eastwood has never been a character actor.  Any character that he played would come off as Clint Eastwood’s interpretation of that character

On the other side of the Western Actor Branding Scale, we have thespians like Eli Wallach and Yul Brynner.  While these actors varied the roles, character types, film genres and performances that they gave in each movie, giving them a wider audience into some areas that Wayne or Eastwood might not reach as well, they did not gain as much recognition or acclaim.  Because they let the characters overshadow their own personalities, giving iconic performances as people other than themselves.

When developing your personal brand, a key factor to success is consistency.  If your actions don’t match your words, your resume doesn’t match your experiences or the Google results for your name don’t match your industry, you have a big brand management problem.

If you take the character actor’s method, you might have a more diverse array of skills and competencies, but you will have a diluted personal brand that will not help you establish yourself in your chosen field.  Instead, you need to commit yourself to Eastwood’s method and stay on-point with your messages.  It’s not something that you can pause or turn off – everything you do reflects on the brand of You.

You are your brand.

This might sound a little daunting, but it should come as more of a relief.  You’ve been building your personal brand for years through your education, work experiences, personality and skills.  You already have an intrinsic knowledge of your personal brand and how to best apply it to get what you want.  You can add a web presence, but your personal brand’s product, CEO and mascot has been, and will always be, you.

So the next time you’re trying to boost your personal brand to get more attention from prospective employers, get more hits on your blog or make yourself known socially, make sure to stay on point with a consistent message.  It worked for Clint Eastwood.

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This post was written for the FortuneCity.com Personal Branding Series on BrazenCareerist.  If you haven’t signed up for the site already (even though we talked about this), do it now and check out some awesome career, business and life blogs.